


The capital of the figure skating world

by Mary_the_gardener



Category: Figure Skating RPF, HEMINGWAY Ernest - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe, CSKA, Gen, It just happened, Please Forgive me, There may be some crack, ksas, nothing makes sense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-01-31 22:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_the_gardener/pseuds/Mary_the_gardener
Summary: Basically The capital of the world by Ernest Hemingway rewritten in figure skating terms





	1. Chapter one - Intro

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically me thirsting over Hem's works cause they're just way too beautiful and so reshaping this in figure skating terms seemed like a good excuse to obsess over it.
> 
> This thing should be just one piece, but I'm a disaster so have this for now :P
> 
> I've got to thank the whole of ksas for helping me get through this mess, I never would have made it without you guys! And especially ForeverDoesntExist for practically babysitting the writer me all the time!
> 
>  
> 
> In the end-notes you can find a list of the characters if needed ;)

Moscow is full of boys named Dima, which is the diminutive of Dimitri, and there’s a meme about this dad who made a VKontakte account to post something like: “Dima all is forgiven, meet me at the hotel X, comment to let me know when you will come, papa.” And the post would get so flooded with comments as to make the servers crash down.

But this Dima, who worked as a janitor at the CSKA rink, didn’t have a dad to forgive him nor anything to be forgiven. He had two sisters who worked at the rink’s cafeteria, who had gotten their place because they came from the same small town as a girl who had previously worked there proving to be polite and hardworking, thus providing a good name to her town and its inhabitants. Alina and Yulia had payed Dima all the travel expenses to come to Moscow and gotten him the place as janitor. The boy came from a small town in Udmurtia, where the life was still pretty rural, the main sources of employment agriculture and a couple of factories; and he had always worked hard since he could remember.

He was a boy with a slender frame, ash blonde air perfectly straight, fine teeth, a fair skin envied by his sisters and a serious face, garnished by a wide smile only when among close friends. He could move quickly and did his job well, loved his sisters and thought them beautiful and polished; loved Moscow, which he still found astonishing, and loved his job that, done under bright spotlights, near the cold shiny ice, the sparkling competition clothes, and hockey skates to sneak on from time to time, seemed to him of extreme consequence.

There were from one to two hundred people training at the Ice Palace and regularly changing in the locker rooms, but for Dima, the youngest of the three janitors who took care of cleaning the changing rooms, the only ones who really existed were the male skaters out in the senior circuit.

Second-rate skaters trained in that rink, because CSKA was a well-known name, the ice good and the coaching fees and ice time cheap. It is necessary for a figure skater to give the appearance, if not the skills, of a successful skater, since coming from a certain country and training with famous coaches ranked above artistry as the features mostly prised by the ISU judges, so those skaters stayed at the Ice Palace until they’d run out of roubles. It never happened that a skater left the CSKA for a more famous or expensive coach; a second-rate skater never became first-rate. But the descent from CSKA was pretty quick since anyone who won literally anything could stay there, and the bill was never presented if not asked for until Tatiana, the lady that run the rink, deemed it a hopeless case.

At the time there were three pretty decent skaters with hope of making it in the top ten, two retired skaters who had been quite good and were now professionals and a veteran who’d been in the senior circuit for almost ten years. The Ice Palace was a great luxury for the two professionals since, with their residence in Japan, they needed a place to train in during the winter season; but the professionals had a good pay and were occupied in different shows for all the low season and the veteran was highly funded by his federation and all in all they probably made more money than any of the other three skaters. One of those was injured and trying not to make it public; one had passed his short popularity as a novelty and the third was a wimp.

The wimp had once, before getting a quite serious fracture in his right ankle just before the start of his first senior season, been very skilled and exceptionally fluid and he still had a wonderful artistry. He was a funny guy and friendly with everyone. He had, when still in juniors, liked to do roofing and other dangerous activities but he had given them up now. They required a self-confidence that he didn’t have anymore. He had a very serious face and also had a private locker.

The skater that was injured worried very much of not giving it away and took great care of practicing a little of every jump while on the ice. He had a great number of bandages, which he put on himself before leaving his house and had lately started to sell his costumes in the deep web. He had sold some cheaply in September and another one the week before. Those costumes had been very expensive and always well kept and now he had five more. Before getting injured because of boots problems he had been very promising, a revelation even and, though he himself couldn’t read Cyrillic, he still kept press clippings where they said he would become even better than Hanyu. He had his own locker room and on the ice mostly kept to his own.

The skater that had once been a novelty was quite tanned, with a very dignified countenance. He was very cheerful and always joked with others while on the ice. He came from Spain, where the people are extremely warm, and he was a very capable skater; but in this new quads-era he had become old-fashioned before he could ever succeed in winning the Olympics by means of his incredible artistic skills, which were an unmatchable ability to interpret a character and extremely good footwork, and his name in the cast of a show would draw no one to the rink. His novelty had been having an incredible quadruple salcow; but that was deemed an easy jump nowadays and the upcoming kids with heavier technical content were now rewarded with way higher components by the judges.

Of the two professionals one was a guy with high cheekbones and a wrinkly smile, who always wore two-pieces costumes in his programs, drunk too much every evening and tried to flirt with every lady in the rink. The other one was pale, with a boyish face, raven black hair and limbs that looked longer than they actually were. They had both once been very good skaters, but of the first they said he’d lost his skills due to drinking and women and the second was considered too bitchy and willful to stick with the same cast for more than a couple of weeks.

The veteran was almost thirty, blonde, surprisingly fast and on the ice he looked quite musical. His stamina and health were still good for this season and when they wouldn’t be anymore he was smart and experienced enough to know how to keep down the competition nerves and deliver and survive in the circuit for some more seasons. The only difference was that when his stamina and joints would give up he would always struggle to reach the top 20.


	2. Chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Nothing makes sense, nothing makes sense! This is a mess, you've been warned!
> 
> If you move your pointer above the words in cyrillic you'd get a translation for it, this should somehow work for mobiles too but I'm not sure.
> 
> Special thanks to Lujack for the massive help on technical details! :*
> 
>  
> 
> In the end-notes you can find a list of the characters if needed ;)

That evening most of the skaters were done for the day except for the drunkard professional, an amateur skater who competed in the adult circuit and was constantly sprawled on the ice, and two ice dancers. There was a deal at CSKA that gave you the possibility to have ice time in late hours for 20% less than the rest of the day and the ice had just been resurfaced.

The three janitors stood at the boards on the short side of the rink. It was a rule at the Ice Palace that the janitors should stay at the rink until the skaters using the rooms each of them was assigned should all have left, but the one that was in charge of the locker room of the ice dancers had an appointment to go to a chauvinist meeting and Dima had agreed to cover for him.

 

Back in the lockers the skater that was ill was laying down on the bench, alone. The skater that was no longer appreciated by the judges was sitting down, looking out of the window and waiting to get out to drink. The wimp was at the cafeteria, where the younger of Dima’s sisters was closing it and was asking her for something, but she kept laughing and saying no. This skater was saying "Come here, little kitty"

"No" said Alina. "Why should I?"

"To do me a favor."

"You had your dinner and now you want me as dessert"

"Just for this one time, can't be wrong right?"

"Go away please. Let me close the cafeteria I said."

"It's not such a big deal you know..."

"Go away I said."

 

Meanwhile at the rink the taller of the janitors, the one that had to go to the meeting, was saying: "Look at those hoes, how they're ruining the ice".

"You should watch your mouth" said the second janitor. "They are respectable athletes, they're not ruining it that much."

"I'll say what comes to my mind," said the taller one " Russia has two plagues: circuses and ice dancers."

"For sure not the single circus and the single ice dancer" said the second janitor.

"Indeed" Said the chauvinist janitor. "Only knocking the single charlatan we can guarantee the wealth of each worthy citizen. We should close down each circus, deny funding to each ice dancers, one by one. And then there will be no more left."

"Keep this stuff for the meeting" said the other janitor.

"Look at how nasty Moscow is" said the tall one "It's half past ten and they're still stroking around."

"Well, they took the ice only at ten pm" said the other "You know how long a training session takes. Besides, they pay for this ice time."

"How can we maintain our national supremacy with clowns like you?" asked the tall janitor.

"Listen," said the second janitor, which was over his thirties "I lived in Russia all my life, and I'll have to live here for the rest of it, but I've got nothing to complain about. One lives where he can afford it."

"You are right but there’s no unity without love for our homeland."

"I’ve always worked in Moscow. Now go to the meeting, there’s no need for you here."

"You are a good fellow," said the tall janitor. "But you lack loyalty."

"Лучше когда мне хватается этого, чем нечего другого," said the older one, meaning it is better to lack that than a roof above your head. "Go to the meetin'."

Dima hadn’t said anything. He didn’t understand politics at all, but when he heard the tall janitor talk of the necessity of wiping out ice dancers and immigrants he felt each hair on his arms stand. For him the tall janitor represented patriotism and even that was at thing of extreme consequence. Dima dreamed of being a good russian, have a steady job like that and, at the same time, be a competitive skater.

“Go to the meeting, Vince” he said. “I’ll cover for you,”

“ _We_ will.” Said the older one.

“One is more than enough” said Dima. “Go to that meeting.”

“Ладно, я пойду” said Vince “Thank you.”

 

In the meantime, in the cafeteria, Alina had skillfully escaped the hug of the skater, like an agile gazelle jumping away from the lion, and was saying with indignation: “Here’s the greedy ones, a failure of a skater. Full of fear to the brim. If you’re so brave why don’t you put back that quad lutz in your programs?”

“You talk like a slut.”

“A slut’s a woman too, but I’m no slut.”

“You will become one.”

“Not with you for sure!”

“Leve me alone!” Screamed the skater, that now, turned down and rejected, felt his lack of guts resurface.

"Leaving you? There’s nothing you've got left" said Alina. "Don’t you want me to make you a coffee, sir? That’s what you can pay me for.”

“Just leave!” said the skater; his face twisted in a grimace like he was fighting back tears. “You’re a slut. A dirty little slut.”

“Champion. My champion.” said Alina locking the register and walking toward the exit.

In the cafeteria the skater slumped on a chair. On his face the same scowl which, under the bright light of competition, he muted into a concentrated frown who scared the audience closer to the boards. “And this” He screamed. “And this. And this!”

He could remember when he’d been young and carefree, just five years before. He could remember the weight of the skates at his feet on that hot august afternoon, when he still used to stroke around without a care, and how he glided on the ice, taking enough speed to complete four turns of a twizzle, turning forward, bending his right leg, left leg free, left shoulder slightly back and then snapping forward bringing it in line with his hips while his left knee started to unbend, his focus on maintaining the tension throughout his body and controlling his weight on his foot; one turn, two turns, three turns, and then his weight was not on the ball of his foot anymore. His weight was on his toepick and as it seemed stuck in the ice his body kept spinning off axis with the momentum he’d gained and then he fell, with all his weight on the torn leg, and something just snapped. So now when he wasn’t the first in his group to take the ice, which happened quite often, he couldn’t help but consider the possibility of getting stuck in a hole right before entering some jumps, and what did that slut know of what he felt in those thirty seconds before the start of the music? And what pain had had to take those who scorned him? They were all hoes and knew very well they deserved it.

 

Back in the rink the professional was resting with his elbows on the boards and stood staring at the couple. If there were single ladies on the ice he’d watch them. If there were not he would like to stare at the girl in a pair, but lacking ladies and pairs he now looked with defiance and some sort of satisfaction at the ice dancers. While he stared the amateur glided to the opening in the boards, slipped his guards on the blades and made his way to the lockers, leaving a good half an hour before the end of the session. Had he been on track with his payments he would have used all of his icetime.

The two ice dancers did not stare back at the rude skater. One of them was lazily whirling around and saying: “We’ve been waiting to talk to him for ten days, we can be at the rink for the whole day but he won’t even glance at us”

“What could we do?”

“What could we do? Nothing. There is nothing you can do with him.”

“We keep trying our best but nothing, he simply lost all his interest in us.”

“We are not good enough for him anymore. If we don’t make it to the short in every competition next season we can as well quit.”

“We didn’t even manage to reach the cutoff at worlds, what can he care about us? We are just a failure to him.”

“Moscow is where you learn what’s under ice dancing. Moscow kills figure skating.”

“If he only talked to us, even just to send us away.”

“Nope. We have to wear out waiting.”

“Well, we shall see, I can train by myself as any other skater.”

At that point the professional got up from the boards, he skated toward the couple and stopped near them showering them with ice and staring them down with a little smile.

“ A фигурист.” Said the girl to her partner.

“And a good one!” Said the skater and exited the rink, going toward the lockers without putting his blade guards on, the noise he made resonating into the arena as he walked away with a smile of satisfaction. His world was a small, professional cocoon confined by skating, night drinking and sassyness. He went in the lockers to put on his shoes, without even bothering to change clothes to go out drinking the night away.

Just after him also the two ice dancers left, having noticed that they were the last to leave the ice. Only Dima and the older janitor were left, waiting for the athletes to leave their lockers too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Patrick: I'm sorry but I couldn't find a single video of Pyeongchang in which we can see you putting blade guards on :P

**Author's Note:**

> Dima - OC, I just couldn't bring myself to kill a young barely known junior skater  
> Wimpy skater - Misha  
> Ill skater - Shoma  
> Old-fashioned skater - Javi  
> Drunkard skater - Patrick  
> Bitchy skater - Jhonny  
> Veteran skater - Michal  
> Problematic janitor - Vincent  
> Older janitor - Bychenko  
> The ice dancers are OC because Weaver/Poje are right now the best of Morozov's students and I really hope he'd treat his own daughter decently, and that's the only two couples he's coaching right now.


End file.
